Governance attack

A governance attack exploits the design of the voting system itself. The fastest route is the flash loan: the attacker borrows millions within a single block, uses them to amass governance tokens, votes and executes, all atomically. It only works if the protocol measures power at the moment of the vote rather than at a past snapshot. Other routes are accumulating or renting tokens on the market until clearing quorum and threshold, or manipulating the system to legitimize holding funds through a proposal. Known mitigations are the past-block snapshot, a timelock between approval and execution, a high quorum and emergency guardians.

It turns a voting design flaw into a direct loss of funds, and it is one of the systemic risks of on-chain governance. Understanding it is exactly what lets you design defenses from the start: measure the vote at a past block and add a mandatory delay before execution.